Gerald Holtom

[5][6] Educated at Gresham's School in Holt, Norfolk, Holtom was a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London.

He showed his preliminary sketches to a DAC meeting in February 1958 at the Peace News offices in North London.

But the cross, for these people, had too many wrong associations – with the Crusaders, with military medals, with the public blessing by an American chaplain of the airplane that flew to Hiroshima – and eventually the arms of the cross were depicted as declining, forming the composite semaphore signal for the letters N and D (the letters "N" (two arms outstretched pointing down at 45 degrees) and "D" (one arm upraised above the head) of the flag semaphore alphabet representing the words nuclear disarmament), and at the same time suggesting a gesture of human despair against the background of a globe.

Eric Austen, who adapted the symbol for ceramic lapel badges, is said to have "discovered that the 'gesture of despair' motif had long been associated with 'the death of man', and the circle with 'the unborn child'".

I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad.